SOTHEBY’S CONTEMPORARY ART EVENING SALE TOTALS $242.2 MILLION

Wednesday night’s contemporary art evening sale at Sotheby’s raised $242.2 million, with a Cy Twombly canvas hauling in the highest price of $36.7 million, Scott Reyburn and Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times report. Surpassing its low estimate of $201.35 million, the auction sold forty-two of its forty-four lots. Sotheby’s has not sold 95 percent of its offerings since 2009. “Now that was an auction,” art adviser Nancy Whyte said. “There were plenty of buyers out there [last night].”

Even though Cy Twombly’s Untitled (New York City), 1968, painting raised the largest sum after an anonymous phone bidder placed the winning $36.7 million bid, it fell short of the sale’s $40 million estimate.

Highlights of the sale include the second highest-selling work, Francis Bacon’s diptych Two Studies for a Self-Portrait, 1970, which sold for $35 million, a Sam Francis, Summer #1, 1957, realized $11.8 million, a David Smith sculpture that sold for $9.2 million, a standing mobile by Alexander Calder that brought in $8.3 million, and a Franz Kline, which raised $8 million.

Christie’s leading buyer at Tuesday night’s postwar and contemporary sale, Yusaku Maezawa—who bought five works, including the show-stealing Jean-Michel Basquiat, which fetched $57.3 million—added two more works to his collection. For $16.6 million he now owns an enamel painting by Christopher Wool, Untitled, 1990, and an Adrian Ghenie painting, Self-Portrait as Vincent van Gogh_, 2012, which was the first work to be bid on at the sale. Ghenie was the only artist included in the show who is younger than forty.